Art gallery offers view of police work beyond the badge

And these were no casual critics of this particular exhibit; their work is its subject.

Tanksley is the chief of the Oak Park Police Department. Reynolds is a commander; Yong, the department's crime analyst. The exhibition, "Tools of the Trade: A Citizen's View of Law Enforcement," is by Lindsay Olson, artist-in-residence of the Oak Park police.

It is an unusual arrangement for a law enforcement agency, Tanksley acknowledged at Thursday's opening at Oak Park Public Library. "If I say the words 'police department,' the first thing that comes to your mind is not 'art gallery,'" he said.

But Olson, an artist who lives in Oak Park, asked Tanksley in 2008 if she could create just that — an art gallery inside the police station. Intrigued at the thought of an oasis of serenity inside the station, he approved it. Over the last two years, the gallery has displayed 10 exhibits, including one of close-up photographs of flowers by crime analyst Yong.

Meanwhile, as she spent time in the station hanging the works, Olson was getting to know the police officers. "I got curious as an artist — what is their day-to-day life like?" she said. "Most of us learn about police from two polar extremes — the corruption, when things aren't going right, and the heroic deeds, when they save lives.

"What I was interested in was something in between. … What was it that made the job really interesting for them? And what is it they would like us residents to know about their job that might not be something we would read about in the paper?"

She asked Tanksley if she could find out. He said she could.

He gave her time to talk to him and other officers, and permission to go on several ride-alongs.

"I was amazed at how much energy it took to get in and out of the car every 15 or 20 minutes. It is physically exhausting," Olson said. The rhythm of the shift was draining, too, she said: "The adrenaline is pumping, and then it (turns out to be) nothing. And then after four nothings, it's something really big."

She asked them to talk about how they worked. One officer told her that he urged people he arrested to think of the experience as a wake-up call to change their lives. Some thanked him.

Olson was mesmerized. "I really fell in love with the department," she said. "I began to appreciate … the passion that many of them have to make sure the bad guys are caught, to make sure people wear their seats belts and are safe. They are really looking out for us.

"And it totally changed the way I made art."

From doing impressionistic landscapes, she found herself drawn to expressing ideas through conceptual art.

Tanksley had told her that language, the material of police reports and courtroom testimony, was the most important tool in law enforcement. So she began to use police officers' words as material in her art.

All over the multimedia works hung in the gallery, tiny, handwritten words ran across the pages, dripped from ink-drawn pens, curved into the shape of handcuffs:

"It's amazing how she was able to intersperse our words into her works of art," Tanksley said.

He was particularly struck by the piece in which words seem to be leaking out of pens.

"There are certain days in which we feel like we're running on empty, that our souls may be draining, depending on what we're dealing with," he said.

Olson thinks the public should know that.

The intense nature of police work can make them feel isolated, she said. "This was my way of saying, 'Where's the human connection? How can we help them do their job and see them not just as a uniform, but as people behind the authority we give them? They're someone's mother, someone's brother, someone's sister or child.'"

Tanksley is proud of his department's art connection; he even plans to contribute his own photography to a future police station exhibit. "I challenge you — you go on any other police department's Web site, and you will not see an area where it says … 'police department art gallery,'" he said at the opening. "But we do."

From the stage, he addressed Olson. "Lindsay, I don't know what put this in your heart, but on behalf of the men and women of the Oak Park Police Department, we appreciate it," he said. "And anything you want, you got it."

"Oooh, I got a parking ticket, chief," Olson shot back. They both laughed in a way that made clear that the police can also be someone's friend.

"Tools of the Trade: A Citizen's View of Law Enforcement" can be seen at the Oak Park Public Library through June 30.